


Mixed Emotions

by Living_Underground



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst (Kind of), Basically Scully just guessing and second guessing, F/M, Pre-Episode: s11e10 My Struggle IV ×, Smut, really just a convoluted mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23551168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: Scully realises she might be pregnant, but she wants to check before she tells Mulder.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	Mixed Emotions

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. Hi. Hello. I, um, yeah. Wow, off to a good start here. I promise my actual writing is better. Marginally. 
> 
> It has been a long while since I have shared anything I have written, and the first time I have shared any of my X-Files stuff, though there is a lot of it hiding away places. 
> 
> This is also the first time sharing any of my terrible, terrible smut, though again, there is a lot of that hiding around the place.
> 
> It's terrible and probably very OOC, I am warning you now. But I am sick of having it on my harddrive.

Legs caught chairs and doorframes as hips connected with table corners and cupboard handles. Shoes and blazers had been kicked and pulled off, leaving a disaster trail behind them. The rhythmic thwack of the screen door as it swung open and closed in the breeze was the metronome to their orchestra of breaths and gasps as they stumbled their way to the kitchen counter. It wasn’t that it was the most practical of surfaces, it was just that it was the only one her brain could think of in the moment.

She’d worn a pencil skirt, reminiscent of the skirts she used to wear, back in the day, when they were young and hadn’t screwed. Easy access, she’d figured when she’d put it on. Her fingers were already tugging his shirt from his slacks whilst her lips were dancing a frenzy with his, the click of teeth drowned by their groans of passion and his hands had started fiddling with the zipper at the side of the skirt. ‘Too slow,’ she murmured, guiding his fingers to the hem as she went back to working on his belt. By the time she had his pants down, he had rucked her skirt up. They were a good team.

Her hands on his shoulders, his on her waist, she was hoisted onto the kitchen counter, equalising their height. Foreheads pressed together, nails scraping scalps, teeth clashing with hot pants mingling. Hands pressing in everywhere, tactile and kinaesthetic they both were.

His fingers curled the top of her nylons, palms on her hips, tugging them down with the black lace panties she was wearing. There was a rip and the nylons tore. ‘Shit’

‘Carry on,’ she murmured, her hand slipping inside his boxers, her other hand in his hair, ‘just keep going.’

She gasped as his fingers found her centre, slicking through the moisture there, pressed herself into his hand. ‘Jesus you’re so ready.’

‘Mmmm, so are you. Stop wasting time.’

‘Wasting time?’ There was an incredulous to his tone. One she wasn’t in the mood for.

‘I need you, Mulder. All of you. Now.’

A rumbling chuckle pressed to her lips, a mumbled remark on her impatience. Hips pulled to the edge of the counter, legs wrapped around waist. Her feet used to shuck his boxers down his legs. Mouth on neck, ear. Uneven breaths.

And then he is pressing into her and her breath is just a gasp and a grunt in his ear as she starts rolling her hips, hand planted on the surface behind her, building their momentum to light-speed.

His left hand slipped inside her blouse, his thumb putting pressure on her pebbled nipple as his fingers cupped her breast. She whimpered, tugging his hand away with hers and entwining their fingers as she held their hands over her head, pinning them back to the cupboard above her.

Her legs tightened around him and he grunted into her shoulder. ‘Jesus, Scully,’ he frees his hands from hers, dropping one down to tangle into her hair and one to rub at her clit.

‘Fuck.’ A moan. A whimper. A gasp.

‘Insatiable…’ she was. Had been for a couple weeks now. Her eyes flicked subconsciously to the calendar pinned to the wall over Mulder’s shoulder.

Shit.

‘Hey, are y-‘

‘Keep. Going.’ She ground out, biting down lightly on the lobe of his ear and rocking her hips harder as she continued to stare at the calendar. Her focus all but gone from what they were doing, she tried recalculating three times, hoping each time for a different date. 34 days ago – 8 days late. Fuck.

_Fuck._

‘Ah, fuck, Scully,’ her attention snapped back to him as he nudged her chin up to lock eyes with her. ‘Come for me, Scully,’ he whispered, the hand that had been tangled in her hair shifting around to cup her face, his thumb rubbing her cheekbone, and it was the sudden tenderness of that action that enabled the tension that they had been building together to crash. She trembled as he slumped against her, his hand still cradling her cheek as the other gently squeezed her thigh. ‘What was that in aid of? Scully?’

‘Hmm?’ She’d slipped away again. Gone back to considering possibilities, what it would mean. For them, the future.

‘I asked where that came from?’

She shrugged, slipping off the counter. ‘I liked your suit today,’ it wasn’t a lie. ‘I need a shower.’

‘You want company?’ A shake of the head. ‘Want me to start cooking dinner?’ A nod and she brushed her lips chastely against his lips, her fingertips running along his jawbone. ‘Thank you, Mulder.’

* * *

‘You okay?’

She blinked, shaking her head as she stared out of the kitchen window towards the treeline. ‘Yeah.’

‘You haven’t touched your muesli.’

She frowned, keeping her gaze on the horizon as she picked up her spoon and stirred the contents of her bowl idly. ‘I want to go to Quantico today. There’s a couple of tests I’d like to run on Mason.’

‘Hasn’t he been collected yet?’ She shook her head to the negative. ‘We closed that file last week, Scully. Is there something we overlooked?’ He was careful to say ‘we’ and not ‘you’ – that wouldn’t have gone down well with her current mood. Her gaze dropped down to her uneaten breakfast. ‘Wanna share with the class?’

‘Not yet. I want to confirm it before we discuss it.’

He studied her. She’d been… _off_ lately; cranky and horny and volatile and subdued. Not his usual Scully. Not in her usual cranky, horny, volatile way, anyway. And she’d barely spoken three words to him since they’d had sex on the counter last night. That wasn’t like her. Even when she was mad at him for something, she was vocal about it, or vocal about something indirectly related to her reason for being mad at him. He could remember few occasions in their time working together and sleeping together and living together in which she had been this quiet for so long. Usually, it meant she was worried. Or jealous. There didn’t _seem_ to be any cause for jealousy, and he hadn’t seen her this jealous for many, many years if that was what it was. Which only left worry. ‘You want to grab lunch together? I can come pick you up?’

‘Mulder, even if we met halfway, our lunch breaks would be consumed by the travelling. There’s no point,’ she sighed, looking at the watch on her wrist. ‘I’m running late. I’ll see you tonight.’

‘Call me if you find anything?’

‘Of course.’

And with that she was out of the door, her bag slung over her shoulder and her blazer still hung on the back of the sofa. Maybe she decided she didn’t need it in the sudden and brief early spring heatwave that had washed across DC? He considered chasing after her with it, but at hearing her car pulling off down the driveway he dropped his head to the table. Rocking up at Quantico with her forgotten blazer would probably not go down well, given her current mood.

* * *

The latex tourniquet snapped as she tied it around her upper arm using a hand and her teeth. Not the most professional method, but she was irritable and desperately didn’t want anybody knowing what she was doing, let alone why. They would think she was insane. 54. Infertile. Being late really shouldn’t surprise her. Nor should the slight bloated feeling, or the nausea and dizziness she’d been experiencing lately. Even the discomfort in her breasts. She was a doctor. She knew the signs of perimenopause, had been expecting them. But she also knew the signs of pregnancy. Had _experienced_ them before.

A sharp scratch.

She watched her dark blood filling the phial, meditating on how she felt. Would she be happy? Disappointed? It wasn’t like she didn’t want a child, one she could raise and teach and love for all eternity; a child she wouldn’t lose or have to give up. But…she was…she felt old. Tired. Worn down with all of the fighting and the running and the searching and the losing of the last twenty-something years. And she was 54. Fifty-fucking-four. Not only did she know the chances of conception at her age, particularly given her history, but she knew the odds of complications, and she didn’t think that, after all she had been through, she could handle losing another child. And she certainly knew that Mulder wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Mulder.

She wasn’t even sure how he would react. He would be happy for her, for them, of course, he would, ostensibly at least. But had she put him through too much already? Hadn’t they lost too much together? And he was old, too. Older than he had been, at least. Would he want to bring a child into the world when he wouldn’t necessarily be around long enough to enjoy seeing them live a long, healthy life? And, would he want to bring a child into _this_ world? This world that seemed so depraved. And what if he was truly happy? What if he got his hopes up, only for them to be dashed? She couldn’t do that to him.

Her head ached. She clutched the blood sample in her hand as she dropped her head to the cool metal slab in front of her, whimpered. Her back hurt – perhaps the counter hadn’t been the _best_ location for their escapades last night. Her boobs hurt – she should have gone with one of her old, comfy bras when getting dressed. And this was _not_ supposed to be happening.

Not.

At.

All.

Heaving a sigh, she sat upright and swivelled on the lab stool to face the rest of the cold, bright, shiny room. The walk to the door looked long, and she conceded that perhaps fatigue and lethargy were symptoms she should add to her mental list.

* * *

‘Hey, Agent Scully, I didn’t think we’d be seeing you again for a while,’ the lab tech at the reception smiled. He was young – _too young_ , she thought. Barely old enough to shave. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Had she been like that once? Eager to learn and to please? She guessed she must have been, but she didn’t remember it. Too many things had happened since. ‘Not now the Mason case is over?’

‘I have a theory I want to test,’ she shook the blood-sample between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Want me to send it off?’

‘Please,’ she smiled at him as she placed down the little phial with her blood and a dead man’s case number on it. The form next to it only had one box ticked.

‘He was a dude, though, wasn’t he?’ A sceptical eyebrow was raised, and she returned the challenge with her own quirked brow.

‘Men have hCG in their bodies, too.’

The young tech sighed. ‘I know that, but what’s the point in testing for it? You think he couldn’t produce testosterone and was having it injected? And somehow that was what caused his death?’

‘I sense a touch of sarcasm,’ she’d been sarcastic once upon a time, when met with Mulder’s hare-brained schemes and crazy theories.

‘You know how much these tests cost, Agent Scully? If you’re expecting it to be normal, why are you bothering?’

She shrugged. ‘On the off-chance it’s not. Look, it’s important. Could you put a rush on it for me? Please?’

‘Oh, come on, Agent Scully, you know you’re over your limit of fast-tracks already. I could get in trouble.’

She smiled at him, at his strict abidance of the rules. ‘I’ve been getting in trouble for the last twenty-five years, off and on. Trust me, you get used to it.’

He sighed, dropping his head back with a groan. ‘If I lose my job over this, I’m blaming you. The labs are all backed up at the moment.’

A sympathetic smile. ‘Aren’t they always? Just as soon as possible? I’ll bring you back coffee when I go to lunch?’

‘I’ll ask. But it won’t be done until late afternoon if they get it done today.’

‘Thank you. Truly,’ she nodded. ‘I’ll be back in forty-five with your coffee.’

* * *

‘Black, two sugars.’

‘You remembered,’ the lab tech smiled in surprise. Whether it was in reference to his order, or simply the promised coffee, she was unsure, but she knew that both were probably unexpected from a senior agent. But she always made a point to learn and remembered people’s coffee orders. It came in handy when you needed something. And she always made sure to be on good terms with anyone who she might need something from. Besides, she liked this lab tech. He reminded her of herself, a long time ago.

She shrugged as she signed in, ‘you risked your job for me. It’s the least I could do.’

‘Will you be here until the lab results are through, or do you want me to send them on to the Hoover Building?’

‘I’ll stay. I want to get them first hand. Thank you, though.’

‘No problem, Agent Scully.’

She nodded as he buzzed her into the labs, making a beeline for the morgue elevator. Whilst there were no bodies down there requiring her attention, she knew it was probably empty and that the bathrooms down there would be too. She also knew it was a relatively private space to cry if she needed to – not that she was _planning_ on crying - but if it happened, it would give her the seclusion she needed.

The elevator seemed to take an age as the paper drugstore bag burned a hole in her purse and straight into her side. Part of her wanted to wait for the blood-test to come back, but the rest of her just wanted to know, so she could plan for the future. Her future.

Their future.

It had been her plan since yesterday evening: go to the lab, draw blood, send blood off for hCG analysis, get drugstore test over lunch, spend the rest of the day in the morgue catching up on paperwork and waiting for the hCG results. She should have been calm and collected. She knew what to expect: a single blue line. She’d seen it enough times before, had long since realised that getting her hopes up got her nowhere. 

But what if?

Her stomach churned. This time felt different. This time felt like before.

As the elevator door hissed open she was overpowered by the feeling that Mulder should be there with her, by her side, pacing impatiently as he looked at his watch every ten seconds. He should be there to hold her as they looked, to brush her tears away no matter what the outcome.

The doors sliding back shut jolted her out of her spiralling thoughts and she slipped out just before they could close. Her heels clacked down the empty corridor, echoing in the peace of the basement.

She’d become used to being underground over the years, either in various morgues around the country or in the basement office she had grown to call a second home for much of her life, and a sense of calm filled her as she walked further into the depths of the building. Whereat first she had had a sense of claustrophobia when she had started working in basements, now she felt a great comfort in the quiet, the gentle whirring of air circulation units and the hum of generators. In the quiet, she could identify noises that didn’t belong. She could pinpoint danger from them.

The bathrooms at the back of the morgue were, as she had expected, empty. She had checked the class schedules, checked nobody had any autopsies scheduled. She was alone.

Locking the main door to the women’s room, leaving her bag on the counter and pulling out the two pregnancy tests from her bag, she locked herself into a stall with a sigh.

In three minutes her life could change. Or it could remain the same.

And, harbouring disappointment at herself for the thought, she couldn’t figure out which path she wanted. The arguments for and against had been swimming in her head, milling around and simply not shutting up, since seeing the goddamn calendar last night. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a child, of course, she did. But the arguments against were a comfort, a rationalisation of all the reasons that, when there was only one line on the test, she should be grateful and not disappointed.

Sliding the bolt back, stepping over to the sink and setting the two tests down, side by side, she glanced at her watch before washing her hands.

Two minutes thirty.

She pulled her phone from her pocket, thumbing it on and tapping messages, opening straight into her last texts from Mulder. She ran her thumbnail along the seal between the glass and the metal casing. She could call him. Ask him to come join her. But what if the tests were negative? Which they probably were. Realistically speaking. Logically speaking. Then he would have driven all the way over for no reason. He would see the disappointment in her eyes at something that could never happen, that they both knew could never happen, that they had both agreed a long time ago to stop pursuing. The alarm on her watch chimed. Her phone in her pocket, she took a calming breath to will away the dizziness and nausea, before looking down.

She believed in miracles. She’d seen miracles, experienced miracles, had been gifted with them. But she was also certain that she barely deserved the miracles she had been blessed with, and certainly didn’t deserve any more.

Four blue lines blurred in her vision as her eyes watered and she sniffed. There was still a chance that they were negative, still no point in getting her hopes up. But still, she couldn’t help a smile touching her lips. She had prayed for this. Had spent nights sobbing silently in the bathroom after only one line showed up.

Drying her eyes with the back of her fingers, she wrapped the two tests in tissue and placed them in the wastebasket in the corner. Unlocking the door, she walked through to the locker room and lay down on the wooden bench in the middle. She felt drained, suddenly. Didn’t want to have to think about anything until she got the lab results back. The dizziness that had been plaguing her was beginning to worsen with the sheer amount of emotion her brain was trying to process. Closing her eyes to the world and slinging an arm over her face to block out any light, she counted her breaths, slowing them as she felt her body relax, allowing herself to slip into a dream of warmth and sugar cookies and summer days and children’s laughter.

* * *

‘Hey, Agent Scully, there you are. I’ve got those results you wanted, been looking all over for you,’ the lab tech smiled at her, a smile Agent Pendrell used to give her. She sat up from the bench, knowing what they would say even as she reached out to take them. Her stomach rolled and she felt dizzy. At this point, she was 99% certain, but this would top it off. Be her last one per cent. Her incorrigible, indubitable, infallible proof. ‘You okay, Agent Scully? You don’t look too great.’

‘Yeah, just…’ she waved him off, reaching for the folder in his hand. She flipped it open, trying to focus her eyes on the page in front of her.

It took thirteen seconds to scan the document.

Another five spent staring at the results.

Three for her lunch to be retched back up, over her blouse and slacks.

‘Christ! Here, lay back down. I’ll grab you some water. Hold on,’ he was back in moments with a stack of paper towels and a plastic cup of water. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

She groaned, a hand on her stomach as she closed her eyes to the fluorescent lighting and tried to breathe deeply through her mouth. ‘Probably just something I ate,’ she took one of the paper towels and started mopping her face.

‘You’re shaking.’

Taking another deep breath, she shifted back to sitting. ‘I’m fine.’

He nodded, not entirely convinced but figuring that questioning it wouldn’t get him very far. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’

‘Ugh, the trunk of my car, there’s a duffle bag with spare clothes. Could you get it for me? Please?’ She smiled gratefully at him as he nodded. ‘Keys are in the side pocket of my bag,’ she waved over to where it was sat in the corner of the room, ‘and, uh…could you keep this discrete?’

‘Of course.’

‘Just…leave the bag on the bench, please? I need to take a shower.’

‘Of course, Agent Scully,’ he nodded, leaving the room with a concerned glance over his shoulder.

She slipped the buttons undone on her blouse one by one, taking time to calm her trembling fingers. She folded it neatly, dropping it into the bin in the corner. Her slacks followed. A cupboard with spare scrubs and towels was in the corner, and she grabbed a terrycloth sheet before making her way to the frosted doors of the shower block. It wasn’t until she was under the hot spray of water that her lip trembled, her face crumpled and she slumped against the wall.

‘You can’t hear me, I know that, but you’ve got to listen, okay, you’ve got to know that you have got so much ahead of you, so much you are going to have to fight through, and for-‘ her voice cracked and she dropped a hand to her stomach, fingertips brushing the smooth, flat skin there. ‘You’ve got to hang on, okay. You’ve got to stay inside there for seven and a bit more months, okay, and you’re going to be so, so loved, by me, and your daddy, and we’re going to be so, so good, all together. But you have to make it, okay. We’ll work together, but you have to make it.’

‘Christ,’ she huffed, looking upwards, ‘I’m talking to an embryo. An embryo that shouldn’t even exist. Not that I don’t want you,’ she added, looking down again, ‘I just never expected you.’

Water and emotion washed over her in torrents. What if something went wrong? What if nothing went wrong?

A snort of laughter burst from her. It was ludicrous, the idea. The idea that life could be growing in a womb she had been told so, so many times would be empty. But her science, her precious science that had let her down so frequently, was telling her once more that she had a chance of being a mother.

She shut off the water, slipping out and wrapping herself in the stiff towel and finding her duffle bag on the bench in the locker room. There were jeans and a grey hoodie in there, and underwear, all of which she slipped on. Knowing there was a hairdryer tucked away behind the spare scrubs, she pulled it out, grabbing the hairbrush she kept in her overnight bag.

She was going to have to figure out how to tell Mulder.

* * *

She'd spent most of the rest of the afternoon swapping between pacing the lab and writing up case reports, always going back to pacing when her mind wandered back to how to tell Mulder, how to tell him not to get too excited, but... The dusk had been growing when she'd left Quantico, and by the time she hopped out of the car to unlock the gate onto their property, it was dark and a chill was setting in. Her phone rang as she was pulling up the driveway. Monica Reyes. A moment of doubt. She was working with _him_. She couldn’t be trusted.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t have to be listened to.

‘Scully.’

‘It’s Monica.’

‘I know. What do you want?’ So maybe she could have been politer. But she was talking to a traitor and she really just wanted to talk to Mulder.

‘I’ve not got long. It’s about William. I know where he is.’

Her heart froze. She didn’t trust this. She wanted to, oh how she wanted to. Monica had delivered him, had held him. She wanted to trust this woman who had once been her friend. But she knew better.

As she slammed the brakes of the car on, ripping the key from the ignition and hopping out, she considered hanging up. What good would false hope do her anyway? What good would traitorous lies do them? What good would this probable trap do them?

But she had to know. If there was a chance, any chance at all, she had to know. She was jogging up the steps to the porch, pushing the front door open. ‘I’ll put you on speakerphone.’

Mulder was sat at his desk, reading in the lamplight, looking up when she burst in. Maybe she had taken longer than she had expected at the lab. ‘Who’s on the phone?’

‘This is Monica Reyes. I think they’ve got your son, William’

‘Just tell me where he is, Monica,’ Mulder states, locking eyes with her. She wonders if he is questioning her recent behaviour, whether he is thinking that one has something to do with the other.

‘Tennessee. Being transported by a private jet. Tail number N-G-D-J-G, landing in Maryland in two hours.’

‘Which airport in Maryland?’ He was up and grabbing his weapon from the desk drawer. He always had been more trusting than her, more willing to go out on a limb.

‘Braddock ATCA, southeast terminal. This may be your last good chance.’

‘When you say “last good chance,” what exactly do you mean?’ He asks, grabbing his coat as she picks up her phone.

‘The person who controls your son is the person who controls the future.’ And then Monica is gone.

Scully shakes her head as she tucks her phone into her pocket. ‘He’s not on that plane, Mulder.’

‘You have any reason to distrust her?’

Other than her working for C.G.B.? Other than her being a traitor. But no, she can’t say that. That’s all from a vision of the future. A future she desperately hopes does not coincide with the one she spent the day discovering. A future she desperately hopes they can avert. ‘I don’t know how I know, I just know that he’s not on that plane.’

‘But what if he is on the plane? What-what if this is our last good chance?’

And that’s it. That’s the moment her heart breaks. Because for the second time in a day she doesn’t know what she wants. And whilst she knows, knows deep down inside of her that he is not on the plane, she also knows neither will forgive the other if they don’t check, just on the off-chance.

This was not how her day was meant to go. She was not _meant_ to be pregnant. But she was. And so, she had planned, planned precisely what she would say to him, to her Mulder. Tell him that maybe it was time they cleared out the spare room. Tell him that she’d have to lay off the wine for a bit. Tell him not to get too excited. But tell him that maybe, just maybe, they had a second chance. And he would tell her that he was so, so happy. Tell her that no matter what happened, he would be there for her, to look after her and care for her. Tell her that he would do everything in his power to make sure nothing bad would happen this time. Tell her he would book a doctors’ appointment first thing in the morning. Tell her to sit down, maybe she should relax, he’ll go up and run her a bath, is there anything she wants to eat?

She was _not_ meant to be watching him leave. She was not meant to be _letting_ him leave. She was not meant to be having her heart broken.

She was not meant to be telling him to _just come back alive._

**Author's Note:**

> Well, if you made it this far, you deserve a cupcake or three. Congratulations. 
> 
> Any feedback is greatly welcomed. It might even prompt me to write more if you are lucky. Or unlucky. Depends on your perception of this. 
> 
> Also, if anyone can think of a better title for this it would be greatly appreciated. I am not great with titles.


End file.
